856 Puller

The Story of an IH 856 Puller

January 2002: by Blaine Griggs

	These are some pictures of a 1968 856 IH I used to pull years ago. The first pictures are when Paul Godfrey from South Greenfield, MO owned it. He moved here from South Chaleston, Ohio in 1967 and was an old neighbor to pulling legend Danny Dean of "Rooster" 1066 IH fame. When Paul owned this tractor he hauled it to Ohio every Spring to plant 400 acres of corn there on the old family farm. Paul was a super nice guy and was well liked.
Paul bought this 856 brand new in 1968 and pulled it in the 12,000 lb class from 1968-70 and pretty well dominated things in SW Missouri. I know you are going to ask why are people riding on the tractor in the 15,000 lb class at Richhill, MO in 1969.
	Back then you could only pull one class and Paul pulled at 12,000 lbs. We used walk on sleds with a 6 mph pace tractor. Well, after he won the 12,000 lb class at Rich Hill a challenge was issued that he could not beat a pretty warm 15,000 lb class D-21 AC from our area. Bets were placed on the outcome. Paul did not have any extra weight racks so he borrowed a few front weights and chained on all t weights he could, plus they let (4) people ride on the tractor with him for weight. He still did good to weigh 14,000lbs but he had a few more ponies under the hood than the D-21 so it was even.
A 15,000 lb tractor was on the sled and both the 856 and D-21 made full pulls picking up all 60 sled riders on a 300 ft track. The sled was too short to hold another tractor so they put a 12 ton Cat road grader on the sled and it used the blade to hold its front wheels off the ground. There were 10 men added to the sled too at the start and I was one of them. The D-21 pulled first and came up a little short of a full pull. The old 856 tightened the chain and blew it out the end. The crowd went wild. The AC people were shaking their heads as they had been top dog for a long time.
	It was a hot August Sunday afternoon and the friction from all the weight on the sled got peoples shoes hot and the Cat grader tires were hot. This is the truth. This was the best track I have ever seen in 37 years and 600 pulls. No loose dirt was pulled up, no holes were dug, it took lots of power, and it took record weight on the sled to stop it in all classes. The sheepsfoot marks still showed in the track when the pull was over. That pull was 33 years ago but people still talk about it today.
I bought this 856 at a sale in 1974 and pulled it every year that I owned it from 1974-1986. It was pulled in everything from 12,000 SS to 10,000 thru 15,000 stock classes. It always did great for me. It was run at 150 horses for farming,200 horses in the stock classes, and at 400 horses in 12,000 SS class.
	In 12 years all we did was put rings in it, do a valve job, and put in one bull pinion. As far as I know it had the original TA and I adjusted the clutch once. I wish I had took pictures of it in the terribly muddy fall harvest of 1974. Seven times it pulled out a stuck 403 IH combine with arps tracks on when no other tractor could leave the end of the field. It had a 4100 IH flywheel and clutch and lots more goodies. We took off pulling out stuck stuff in high 3rd and shoved the TA forward turning 24.5's with 18.4 duals. If IH had built them all this good Tenneco would have never needed to buy out IH.

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